I want to talk about a new project I have called “ The CFP Report ” and invite you to join.

WHY?

A few months ago, I was chatting with my good friend Brandon Savage when he posited an idea. “What if we setup a mailing list for people who wanted to know about open CFPs?” As Brandon and I do often, we chased the rabbit for a whilebefore getting back to work. (Everyone should have a friend like Brandon , he is part idea generator, part bullshit screen.)

The more I thought about it, the more I kinda liked the idea. I did some reasearch and yes, there are other good services that are doing similar things. However, I couldn’t find anything that would do the job I wanted done. Specifically, I wanted not only to know about CFPs, I wanted to know if they were CFPs to which I would want to submit.

So I sat down and started thinking about exactly what I needed to know before I would submit. Surprisingly, my personal criteria is pretty short.

Am I alreadycommitted during the dates? Do they cover travel?

Other people wantedto know more though, so I added a few more fields. I know some developers that are only interested in speaking at community conferences. Others will only speak at conferences with a Code of Conduct. So we – the Lovely and Talented Kathy & I – gathered together everything we thought that a speaker would need to make a decision on speaking at a conference, and we built a system around it.

WHAT?

The CFP Report is mostly a mailing list, except not quite. I like to think of it as a push notification service for web developers who want to share what they have learned.

Push Only

The CFP Report will only be delivered by email. We don’t make the information available on a webpage (there are good services doing that already) and we don’t tweet them out to you.(Again, being done, and very well) We send you an email once a week with everything we have found that is still open.

Web Developers Only

As soon as we launched, we were asked if it would include:

Design conferences Mobile conferences IoT conferences

These are all great things, but no, that is not our focus. We focus on web and developers . So currently we are only listingCFPs that are of interest to developers who use:

We are focused on developers who really want to share what they know. Honestly, if you aren’t passionate about sharing, why would you signup in the first place? This isn’t for every developer, it is for every developer who wants to help other developers. We understand that not every developer wants to share. We are fine with that. However, for those that do, we want to make it easy for you to decide where to share .

When?

If you understand that you know something other developers haven’t yet figured out, the the when is simple, now ! Don’t wait, sign up now. As soon as you do, we send you your first email. Then we send you one every Wed morning, that’s it. One email a week to help you figure out how to share, and share more.

Start a Habit

We want Wednesday morning to become“Conference Morning”. We want you to get in the habit of receiving the email, scanning it, andfiguring out if there are any conferencesyou want to submit to. Thenwe want you to take that one final step and submit a talk.We want you to do this everyWednesday morning.We wantit to become a habit. We want you to get in the habit of sharing what you know, sharing what you have learned. When you share, all of us get smarter,including you.

How Much?

Inevitably, the conversation turns to “How much is this gonna cost me?”. I can say with all sincerity that I have absolutely no plans to ever charge developers or conferences for access to “The CFP Report”. I don’t plan on making premium features. I don’t plan on giving conferences a way to “buy the top slot”. Doing either of these would – in my opinion – create a caste system. Big conferences get preferential treatment, speakers with the budget could get better access. Nope, that is not why we made it. It actually goes against why we made it.

The CFP Report is free for developers &conferences.

If you are not the customer, you are the product

Yes, we are selling your attention. We sell the ads in the email. There is one at the second position (right after the first CFP) and then one every 4th position after that. That iswhat we sell, that is how we pay someone to find and research the CFPs. I am not in any way ashamed of the fact that this is a for-profit service. If you want more information, check ou our Privacy Policy . If you still have questions, ask us .

Become a Sponsor

Looking to attract the attention of developers? Specifically developers who like sharing what they know, advertise with us . (Unless you are a conference, we won’t accept you if you are.)

What are you waiting for?

Even if you have never spoken at a conference before, join The CFP Report and see what is available to you. While you are at it, bring one friend with you.